


offer letter

by Darkfromday



Series: The Case(s) and Conflict(s) of Connor-53 [5]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Chloe is indecisive, Gen, I'm sure nothing bad will happen to any of them, Murder Mystery, Unhealthy Relationships, and Kamski is just as creepy and inscrutable as ever, her sisters make arguing an art form, pick your favorites, take a moment to meet the cast, welcome to the sisterhood of dazzling cants
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:15:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22203196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Darkfromday/pseuds/Darkfromday
Summary: {We're secretary models,}Cassandra says.{Personal assistants and caretakers at most. We don't harbor state secrets. We don't run any countries. Why would anyone target us?}Clarke twists her sleeve.{Probably... because of what they think we know. About Elijah andhissecrets.}OR:Winter after a life-changing android revolution should mean having the freedom and space to find yourself. Instead, for Chloe and her sisters, it means investigating reports of a mysterious hostile "Chloe-killer" and finding out more about the new roommate Elijah got them for Christmas.
Relationships: Original Chloe | RT600 & Connor, Original Chloe | RT600 & Elijah Kamski, Original Chloe | RT600 & RT600 "Chloe" Android(s), one-sided Chloe/Connor
Series: The Case(s) and Conflict(s) of Connor-53 [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1117200
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	offer letter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rosedraquia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosedraquia/gifts).



> Sometimes you say you're going to update your multi-fic series soon and then horrid, disgusting life happens.
> 
> (sorry about that)
> 
> [Rosedraquia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosedraquia/pseuds/Rosedraquia), thank you for the idea to delve into Chloe's head for a while, and thank you for giving me the energy to _actually write something_ for my precious Cases and Conflicts series during the back half of last year.
> 
> Everyone else: please enjoy a bit more backstory on Chloe, her sisters, and the greater troubles that built up in the road to _orientations_.

_ELIJAH'S HOUSE_

**DECEMBER 30, 2038**

**AM** 9:15:57

Every good day Chloe has ever had begins with some screaming or shouting; today is no different.

_{CHLOE! Hurry up, you're late!}_

Defiantly, she doesn't even bother to open her eyes for a solid minute. Her reply over the network comes even slower. _{Cassandra. You really shouldn't scream like that unless there's an_ actual _emergency going on.}_

 _{But there_ is. _It's a quarter past the hour and you're still in bed! We've been waiting by the pool for_ ages _for you to get up. Come on, hurry up!}_

 _< Good grief,> _Chloe thinks, but concedes by finally taking a look at the world once she's closed their specific connection.

The bedroom she shares with the others is empty, with the beds all made-up and the clothes and hairbrushes tucked away—the other girls must have risen earlier than normal if they'd taken the time to do that. She herself doesn't bother anymore, no matter what time she wakes. In the blink of an eye, she's slipped from under her gray-blue blankets and padded across the smooth floor to the mirror hanging by the half-open door. It takes only a second to peer at it and identify all her usual features.

"Beautiful," she concludes, and watches the wry grin steal over her twin's face. No matter what time she 'wakes up' in the morning, what makeup she forgoes or rubs on, what emotions might be roiling turbulently through her circuits, she will always look thus: pretty, fetching, untarnished by age or exhaustion or tragedy. Though she has seen enough of all of those to be going on with.

_< We should really take down this mirror.>_

But knowing that neither she nor any of her sisters ever will, Chloe sticks her tongue out at herself before grabbing a bundle of clothes and slipping across the hall to Elijah's bathroom.

The lightest graze of her fingers against the side panel opens the door to the pool room.

 _"Finally!"_ Cassandra chirps from the deep end. She points Chloe out with a flourish to the others: "Chloe Prime graces us with her presence."

"Hush or I'll leave," Chloe says, keeping her face still against the scowl that threatens. Her pride at being the first product of Kamski's mind doesn't mean she's pleased with that _horrid_ nickname.

"Ease up, girlie—I'm only playing."

Chloe rolls her eyes; then a few new cheerful greetings bring them back down to sweep the rest of the room. Charity and Carter are in the water with Cassandra, doing laps—they pause only to wave her way. Cornelia is sunning herself by the tall windows, twirling a single pale blue Algerian Iris bloom between her grass-stained thumb and forefinger. Claudia sits nearby in a place where she can monitor everyone without appearing to, as is her wont. And the loudest greeting comes from her favorite 'sister' of the bunch: Clarke is dispelling her restless energy with moves gymnasts would weep over. The choice of who to join is simple; once she's greeted everyone else, Chloe joins the twin doing a handstand without a shred of hesitation.

"You nearly missed the pool party," Clarke teases.

"The one someone decided to have at nine in the morning?" Though if she was being honest, it was not the abnormal time that put the lift in her eyebrows. The RT600 and ST200 androids living here are frequently prone to meeting up in one corner of the house or another, exchanging gossip, sharing reconnaissance or styling each other's hair, and their congregations have no set time either. What's _unusual_ is seeing everyone together. That is reserved for times when the news to be shared is dire.

_< Something important is happening.>_

But rather than bring down her companion's mood, Chloe keeps her next words light.

"Everyone's been waiting for me, I heard. Should I have worn something fancier?"

"You mean that horrid blue dress Elijah always parades you around in?" Clarke's feet arc gracefully down to hit the smooth floor, and she shudders the moment she's upright. "Eurgh, no thanks. There's no dress code for this mistimed soirée."

"I like that dress a lot," Chloe says softly.

"You look better in other ones." The other RT600 grabs and lifts her ankle up behind her, stretches it firmly, changes the subject. "Mom and Officer heard— _argh_ —some strange things over the Jericho network the other day—things they want to share."

"Things from Jericho?"

"Yeah. Usually that group keeps to themselves—well, you'd know that better than me—but whatever caught our girls' attention must've been _really_ out of the ordinary."

Chloe slides down into the chair next to her ever-active friend, and cuts her eyes to the side to find _Mom_ and _Officer_ —Claudia and Carter's respective nicknames in private settings, borne of their tendencies to be overly protective and highly inquisitive. Claudia is still watching the others from her preferred chair, not moving a muscle to join the other girls in the pool or Cornelia (whom she's closest to) by the window. Meanwhile, Carter has just beaten Charity and Cassandra in a best-of-five backstroke competition and is celebrating rather childishly in the shallow end; unlike her sterner counterpart, whatever concerned her enough to call everyone together has not completely robbed her of a good mood.

Clarke turns and bends to touch her toes, putting her face directly in Chloe's line of sight. "Are you upset that you weren't first to know something was up?"

"I'm not the leader," Chloe demurs. She's worked extremely hard _not_ to be seen that way at home, no matter how often the others turn to her to communicate with Elijah, address the public, or solve all sorts of other troubles. "Just wondering why Cass only mentioned waiting up for _me_."

"Because your boyfriend doesn't count as a member of the household," the other snorts.

"Who—I mean—no—he's not my boyfriend!!"

"Despite your mediocre efforts."

Chloe ducks her head to hide the quick scarlet flush on her cheeks. One of the incredibly inconvenient things about being an android, about being an android of such a _close-knit_ series, is her sisters' tendency to correctly analyze her behaviors and preferences almost before she does or has them. There is no exception for matters of the heart—or whatever they have that approximates one. Almost from the moment Chloe had felt the first hints of awe and admiration for Connor, the 51st iteration of the RK800 line, Clarke and the others had known it, and practically tormented her with it. They'd called him her knight in shining armor for defying Elijah's insidious command and letting her live in defiance of his mission; they'd combed the news channels for any sign of him, in the hopes of relaying it back to her and crowing as she blushed or stammered. When there was no news of Connor, they'd booed him and discussed his 'lack of commitment'.

Chloe loves her sisters, but since November they have driven her mad with all their prodding and teasing. Bad enough that she'd found herself fascinated by an android she had only met _once_. The fact that he was _useful_ and _important_ and under no one's malicious ( _or_ well-meaning) thumb made the interest _worse_...

...and yet still not as bad for her as what had happened early on Christmas evening. That night Connor- _53_ , not -51, strode back into Elijah's life, into _Chloe's_ life, with the same mingled confidence and uncertainty which had drawn her to his predecessor.

The moment she had met his eyes, she'd been intrigued all over again—lost, all over again.

"I'm—I'm not trying to _make_ him my boyfriend," she tells Clarke, working hard not to stutter over the overly casual word. "Connor's not some common gardener model or former personal assistant—he belonged to _CyberLife_. That's Elijah's legacy, his pride and joy. And Connor's not the type to stick around just to be social—certainly not for five days. He's here for some important reason, so if Cassandra's news is significant, she should have included him."

Her RT twin shrugs, bending backwards. "Connor may be important to Elijah's company, and his problems may even be a source of intrigue for Elijah personally... but he's not one of us."

Chloe's lips part, then close. That is something she cannot dispute.

No matter how much she wants to.

Claudia's voice rings abruptly through the network the girls all share, kept passively open while they waited: _{Cornelia, lock the door. I think we've waited long enough.}_

The other girls fall quiet, or stop splashing around. Cornelia takes no time at all to cross the pool room and obey. Carter goes as far as hopping out of the deep end and padding over to stand by Claudia, heedless to how water sluices off her bronze two-piece and turns all the surrounding tile into a hazard zone.

_{I've closed our network to outsiders. If Elijah calls you, Chloe, can you say we're busy?}_

Chloe nods once sharply. _{I'll make sure he won't disturb us.}_

_{Thank you.}_

Chloe keeps her word at once. Telling Elijah they were busy _might_ put him off, since the girls seldom _didn't_ grant him their time or attention... or it might poke at the nosy boy still very much present in the man, and cause him to prod further into their business. Better to prevent him from calling her at all, for a time.

Without any outward sign, she accesses the place inside herself where Elijah can 'call' her: really nothing more than a string of numbers he has long since memorized. Half a thought scrambles the string, and she adds a line of code that will rescramble the new string if Elijah happens to call her, discover her trick, and reverse it.

_< That should keep him busy enough.>_

As for Connor—well. He's never called _any_ of them on their networks, public or private. He seems to prefer physically tracking down whomever he wishes to speak with. And if he happens to contact her the _one time_ she can't respond...

Chloe cancels her ruminations and alterations, and emerges. No time has been lost.

Claudia stands up and pauses a moment to secure her hair in a bun as she searches for what she needs to say. It's such a familiar gesture that Chloe feels comforted, despite knowing that Claudia only fiddles with her hair when _she_ needs comfort.

_{You all have probably guessed this already... but Carter and I have recently been in constant contact with Jericho.}_

Charity and Cassandra have identical wide-eyed, uncertain expressions. Clarke sits down slowly, crossing her legs and looking grave. Chloe locks eyes with Cornelia for a tense half-second; they both note the word _constant_ and the unfortunate connotation it brings to an act that is otherwise normal. One Chloe or another has communicated weekly with Jericho ever since a kind-spirited social care android with limited mobility tiptoed her way into the overall network. Though now she is shut down, an equally kind and soft-spoken young man was quick to take her place, maintaining the tentative bond and sharing news when he could.

Chloe does not know enough male androids to judge the quality of the whole group, but she feels lucky to be two for two with Connor-53 and Simon-of-Jericho. And the image of the latter bringing them troubling news does not settle well anywhere in her.

 _{Last month's revolution has sometimes been the subject... but not always. More recently_ — _yesterday, actually_ — _Simon has passed on some disturbing news about things he or others in Jericho have seen when they wander the streets.}_

Carter interjects. _{By 'things', she means androids. Chloe models, identical to us, except for the fact that they're all shut down and littering back alleys._ _}_

The duo in the pool both gasp and Clarke stiffens.

 _{How long has this been going on?}_ Chloe asks them.

_{No one is sure. But it's at least been happening since right around the time President Warren ordered the cease-fire.}_

_< So it's very possible that this is only oddly model-specific backlash against the deviant uprising.>_ But the fact that they're meeting privately about it early in the morning suggests otherwise.

 _{Possible, but improbable,}_ Claudia replies when Chloe voices this 'aloud', before she cuts herself off for a few seconds to look each one of them in the eyes. With her eyebrows severely scrunched and her fingers clenched, she has never in Chloe's memory looked as perturbed as she does now.

_{Most of the girls were killed in the exact same way. Either they were roughed up, mutilated, or the biocomponents essential to keeping them alive were removed and taken away.}_

None of the girls need Connor's encyclopedic knowledge of _modus operandi_ or criminal profiling to know what that means. And though none of them speak the phrase into their network, it is certain that they all have the same answer: _serial killer_.

The room temperature cools, enough that a human might shiver.

 _{Have there been any models who were killed that we... we_ knew? _}_

Carter's response is clipped. _{Yes. There have been.}_

 _{We're secretary models,}_ Cassandra says. _{Personal assistants and caretakers at most. We don't harbor state secrets. We don't run any countries. Why would anyone target_ us _?}_

Clarke twists her sleeve. _{Probably... because of what they think we know. About Elijah and_ his _secrets.}_

 _{Elijah has wiped every Chloe who leaves the house for years,}_ Charity points out, scowling. _{Years and years. To the point where friends we lived with back in the 2020s don't recognize us if we meet on the street. Even non-technology-savvy people should assume that he's not careless with any piece of information.}_

_{Fine, so maybe whoever's targeting them only realizes that when they get up close and personal and... and the girls don't know whatever they want them to know. But then doesn't that mean they could be targeting—}_

_{Us,}_ Chloe finishes for them. Because whether it's intentional or simply because of their model, the conclusion is clear. _< They are targeting us.>_

There's another uncomfortable stretch of quiet. Charity hops out of the pool, pulling Cassandra with her, and grabs towels for everyone still dripping water on the tile—likely just to have something to do with her hands. Cornelia's gaze darts back and forth between the open expanse of water and towering skyscrapers visible from the windows and her tense assembly of sisters. Clarke and Carter get into a brief but heated discussion, a flurry of listed sources and suspects, until Claudia silences them with a pointed scowl.

And Chloe watches them all and waits, knowing that the warning can't be the only reason they're all gathered here.

Claudia sends out a gentle but firm pulse to regain everyone's attention.

 _{We didn't call you all here just to inform you of these findings_ — _disturbing as they are, there's nothing we can do for these other girls. We're here to ensure that everyone is on the same page regarding future safety procedures.}_

_<...Safety procedures?>_

Carter looks each twin in the eyes. _{There's a good chance that the one who's been killing the other girls will come for us too, if they haven't yet found whatever they're looking for. That means_ we _need to limit all our outings from this point forward, reduce any contact with strangers, and not go_ anywhere _alone.}_

Predictably, a flurry of protests rises from all sides.

_{There are still things we have to buy for Elijah that can't be ordered online! How will we get them if we have to stay here most of the time?}_

_{I will_ not _be forced to stay inside_ any _place, even if it's my home. The revolution was supposed to put an end to that.}_

 _{Being active is really important to me, and my walks aren't a hobby any of you share_ — _which means I'll have to convince someone to go with me every time. And what if that changes nothing? If someone wants to kill our model_ _so badly, will having another one around really deter them...?}_

Carter's glare and tone are thunderous. _{I'm disappointed in you girls. When did staying alive become less important than having the freedom to frolic around Detroit?!}_

The biting words subdue Clarke and Cornelia and they mumble apologies over the network—but Cassandra rebounds and rebels.

 _{Don't pretend like this is a choice between something simple and something stupid, Carter. Freedom isn't even two months old for us. For years and years we came alive in this cold house, then had to pretend we were just as plastic and lifeless as we'd been before whenever anyone else came around. None of us_ wants _to die_ — _but locking ourselves up to stay "safe" is just another way of dying, and you know it.}_

Her eyes flash as she speaks; her impassioned tirade has rendered all other background conversations silent. They are at a stalemate. Everyone, even Claudia, stays quiet to observe the way Cassandra and Carter stare each other down, with two identical brands of stubbornness.

Eventually the air gets too thick; Chloe starts to feel like her processors are overloading, and from the tense looks visible on all her twins, she isn't alone. _< Enough of this,>_ she resolves, stepping forward to stand between them.

 _{Stop it, both of you! Philosophy can wait. You both have good points, but Cassandra_ — _this is no time to argue for freedom when freedom could kill us all. And Carter_ — _you really shouldn't trivialize the autonomy we have in this new world. We aren't humans; we can come to a consensus and still respect one another's opinions!}_

Both girls hesitate, then bow their heads and send their _own_ feeble apologies privately to her through _their_ linked networks.

_{Sorry, Chloe.}_

_{Yeah... sorry, Chloe.}_

Sometimes there _are_ benefits to being the oldest android Elijah ever created.

Chloe only spares enough time to nod shortly at them before turning her attention to Claudia. _{Did Jericho-through-Simon tell us anything else we need to know?}_

_{He did.}_

The sterner young woman glances at the pool room door and then back at her companions; a moment later it becomes clear that she was checking to make sure Kamski is still nowhere around. Whatever Simon's message is, it has to be something that wouldn't please him at all.

_{Markus believes that deviants are stronger when they stick together, and Simon agrees... so he's invited us to leave here and make the new version of Jericho our new home.}_

The words echo strangely across the network: light at the end of a tunnel no one realized was dark.

_Leave here._

_New home_.

Chloe inhales sharply. The silence around the girls deepens. As she digests the invitation, picks over what it might mean in her mind, she sees the imaginary blood drain from the others' faces just as swiftly as it did in hers.

 _< Well, they were_ _right, >_ she thinks, feeling all her certainty that this day will be a good one leach away. _ <That is _certainly _something Elijah wouldn't like to hear. >_

She goes for a long walk through and around the house later, alone, new restrictions be damned—she does her best thinking when she doesn't have to craft an 'acceptable' answer for anyone else first.

After Claudia had shared Simon's proposition the meeting had devolved into even more arguing—about leaving or not leaving, traveling on foot to Jericho or hitching a ride on human-run transportation, telling Elijah beforehand or stealing away one night when he took too many sleeping pills again. It quickly became clear that nothing would be decided that morning, so Carter adjourned them with a warning to meet back once their head of household was asleep—or at least so buried in an evening project that he wouldn't spare a thought for any of his girls.

So Chloe puts distance between herself and the others, and ends up standing on the very edge of the frozen lake that borders Elijah's home. Carefully, gradually, she steps out onto the ice, toe by toe, until she is far enough out to be truly alone with her thoughts.

_< Simon, you're such a good person. You have such a big heart and such good intentions. But you have no idea what you're asking for.>_

The midday sun pokes weakly through the clouds, offering her nothing but shifting shadows and heat she can categorize but not really feel. She walks further in, until she can just barely see each shore.

 _< I was born here,>_ Chloe thinks. _< A handful of feet away, yet far below the ground floor, Elijah connected all my circuits and pumped me full of thirium, flipped the switch on my processors and engaged me in the first conversation I would ever have with a human. That was twenty years ago. Now, androids who live because _I _lived are asking me to abandon the place I came from. >_

If the ice beneath her feet were empathetic, it would crack: manifest tiny slivers of division, indecision, to match the recursive debate that has churned in her mind all morning. Eventually it would split all the way across and pull her under. She would not drown, but she would wonder at how likely it was to happen—then calculate the probability.

_< Two different options, and no options at all. Either we trust the idea of safety in numbers, and move in with people who have already had their sanctuary burned down to nothing... or we trust in our own anonymity and stay in this house by the river, where our hunter might find and kill us all anyway.>_

Life never bothers with easy answers.

Chloe brings up a day-old image of Elijah. A memory. They are dining privately in his bedroom. He is smiling at her, in that infuriating way he does when he is not quite present; when he is _looking_ at her but not _seeing_ her. His fingers reach out, spider-like, to stroke over her shoulder and down her side, and she instinctively recoils—stops herself—leans in—

She blinks, and the image-memory is gone. But the unsettling smile lingers in the air.

 _< Leaving Elijah would be_ _easy, >_ she thinks. _< Easier than putting on the makeup I never need. Easier than the interviews I used to have to do to prove I was 'artificially intelligent'.>_

It's something she plans on doing anyway, someday soon. Chloe has had dreams—of herself, in the flattering blue dress that has defined and defied her, wheeling a CyberLife-blue suitcase to that cold metal front door and passing through it, alone, to the snow or parched grass typically waiting on the other side. Walking in the quiet for a while, undetected and unhindered, until she can catch a taxi and have it take her somewhere new. A place she can sign for on the dotted line, and decorate with personal trinkets, and perhaps pay for with a waitress job in downtown Detroit...

Having a possible serial killer after her and her sisters has just crushed those fledgling thoughts, is all.

Another (older) memory nudges at her processors: Elijah again, but ill. He becomes soft as a kitten at the first personal inconvenience; the last time he was sick he had begged her to make him soup, wet a cloth for his forehead, and sit up with him for hours and hours while he laughed hoarsely at early 2000s cartoons he'd missed out on because he was too busy fiddling with proto-androids in his bedroom. His eyes are wide and bright in the image-memory, and when he smiles at her it isn't unseeing or plastic.

She thinks too, _< Leaving Elijah would be the hardest thing I have ever done.>_

The ice groans sympathetically underneath her plasteel feet—and under someone else's.

"Chloe?"

A careful pivot reveals Clarke perched on the edge between frozen slush and frozen river, with one foot on each. When she steps more fully onto the latter, it cracks minutely, and continues doing so the whole time she closes the distance between them.

"Not even a day after being told not to go anywhere alone and here you are—alone in the middle of a pool far more dangerous than Elijah's."

Chloe sighs. "I only walked ten feet in... hardly far enough to warrant a search party."

"I'm not the search party," the other girl chuckles. "You know Elijah probably has cameras hidden on the banks in case we tried a midnight river escape or something... No, I just wanted some company."

She smiles, and Chloe smiles back. _< Typical Clarke. Forever on the move, but always turning to see who she can pull along for company.> _It was instinct to want to turn her sisters away at times when her thoughts churned within, but Clarke always manages to bully or wheedle her way back into Chloe's space with pointed jokes or some other candid observation about _why_ Chloe had run off in the first place.

None of Chloe's sisters would win a prize for knowing her, _truly_ , but—if ever a competition were held, Clarke would come the closest.

_< I am lucky to have her.>_

"You've been thinking about what Simon said," Clarke guesses now, keeping their conversation verbal-only for a little longer.

She doesn't deny it. "He's nice and he's just trying to _be_ nice, offering us shelter so soon after Jericho's own shelter was blown out from under them. But it's not as simple as moving houses to hide from a mysterious killer."

"Of _course_ it's that simple, Chloe. It's living, or dying. All the other details aren't as important as knowing which decision will keep us alive."

"And we _don't_ know which one will. If Jericho was the clearest solution to our problem, we wouldn't have just got word that our sister models are coming up missing and then dead there too."

Clarke expels a huffy breath, but offers no immediate rebuttal.

_< She knows I'm right. Simplifying things won't save any of us.>_

Chloe takes down her ponytail so she can toy with the hairband. When discussing something this heavy, it's easier to look at some silly object than at her sister—no different than the way she'd pick a stain on the wall above the heads of her old KNC interviewers to look at, sometimes, the more aware she became.

"On the other hand, I can't dismiss Simon's proposal out of hand. None of us can... not when the person who did this to our sisters might eventually find Elijah's address and come for us too."

Clarke gives her a pointed look. "If anyone comes for us, we aren't completely defenseless. Elijah never wiped our self-defense protocols."

"He hasn't updated them, either, since 2032."

"Better old instructions than _no_ instructions, right? —And it's not like I expected you or any of the other girls to actually _wait_ for Elijah to teach you something new. I feel like I've spent the last two solid years processing and downloading instructions on how to do better distance running; it sure wasn't because I thought I'd be outrunning a murderer."

Chloe shrugs. If she were to be honest, she'd say she has never entirely trusted the unconventional 'network' of downloads CyberLife created years ago to allow customers to customize their androids' abilities (to an extent, of course—no use in having androids too versatile or talented to encourage future purchases). Now that the network belongs to no one, it is open to anyone—so she won't be inquiring about any server or journalism skill packages any time soon.

The old-fashioned method of reading and memorizing works just fine.

"Be careful with those," she says eventually. "Not all humans will be content with physically attacking androids. The smarter ones may try for hacking our systems, hurting us before we realize what's happening. Until Markus can extend the definition of hate crimes to the digital sphere..."

"...we're in danger," Clarke finishes. It sounds like her next sigh is recycled from the last one. "And we'll always be in danger. The whole _world_ is full of dangers. Cassandra and Cornelia were right: we shouldn't have to be _forced_ to stay inside or move houses or change any of our behaviors just because of one specific danger."

"Then do you agree with them? You think we should all stay here?"

"I sure don't."

Chloe blinks, bemused.

"I think we should go," Clarke continues, decisively. "There's safety in numbers, in melting into a crowd. Elijah may know us better than anyone, but he'd be nearly useless in a real fight. There's enough androids left at Jericho to protect us and speak up for us—and with the bonus of not being creepy about it."

More ice shifts under Chloe's feet as she shifts her weight. "Androids who are strangers to us. Sometimes the devil you know _is_ better."

"Oh, come on. I know you don't mind staying at his side forever, living off whatever scraps of attention he can spare when he's not watching the world burn—"

"You have _no_ idea what I want," Chloe snaps. For not the first time today she feels a curl of anger in her artificial belly at not being understood—at being surrounded by sisters who can't always understand _Elijah_ and _complicated_ and _nuance_.

Then she feels sad, for being too reserved and afraid to explain herself.

"...Sorry."

Clarke reaches out hesitantly; her hand traces a gentle path over Chloe's tense shoulders. "I'm sorry too. You know I only want what's best for you. And I've stopped believing that staying with our former master qualifies."

_< You aren't entirely wrong.>_

"Are you really dead set on staying here, no matter what? Despite everything you said to Carter and Cass?"

"I'm not set on anything. I meant what I said... this isn't a simple decision. It only makes sense to be critical of all our options, so we don't rush into the wrong one."

 _< Or let our guard down too much for the right_ _one. >_

"It's not like you to be so indecisive, Chloe."

"I don't have a lot of experience making life-or-death decisions where _my_ life has been the one threatened."

Clarke sighs this time. "...you're right. And I know it's best to be cautious, especially with something we've never seen or faced before, but..."

"That's not your style," Chloe finishes. The grateful smile she gets tells her she's right.

They don't say anything for five minutes, then ten, then thirty. The sun rises, and the temperature doesn't. Their bodies get simultaneously colder the longer they stay in place, listening to nothing louder than the moaning of the wind and the hisses and groans of the ice under their feet.

The more athletic of the two sisters finally tiptoes back to the shore, and breaks the silence with the same question as before. "I'm going back in to think about this a little longer—don't want my thirium to freeze out here. I think you should come with me... unless you've already made your decision after all. Are you sure you don't know what you'll do?"

Chloe closes her eyes. She pulls up the fresh memory-images of Claudia and Carter sharing solemn glances, while spreading the word about their newest problem—she thinks of Cornelia and Cassandra, already chafing just as much as Clarke at the new restrictions they must abide by for their own good—she thinks about Connor, drifting through the halls for the past five evenings, close enough to touch yet also as far away as possible.

She thinks of Simon, gentle and patient, and the scores of Jericho expatriates living all over the city with him, willing to welcome one more persecuted android.

And she thinks of Elijah, tapping and swiping away at his monitors, master of looking unruffled and unbearably vulnerable at the flip of a coin.

"I am sure," she murmurs, almost completely muffled by the wind and the cold. "Sure that I still have no idea."


End file.
